The sky is crazy with swallows, purple martins writing gibberish across the complicated skyline, feasting at the pinnacle of their northward travels here on the island of Montreal. Like them I too am a migrant and although I can take my best shot and likely find that I am able to bring the king a pheasant for his table and so prove myself a capable fellow I also need to beware of my tendency for recklessness, wheeling about the sky of my mind like these martins, pronouncing and mispronouncing words and failing to put on winter tires when the seasonal change arrives and the time for caution comes down. That is the mixed message I receive this morning among the birds — while on the horizon wandering clouds tell me not to fear. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Hanging fire like an old suit in the closet of high heaven, the sunrise takes its sweet time blinding the eyes of morning while breakfast's thoughts of lunch get run over on the road. The silhouettes of lampposts line the highway, some surveilling with mounted cameras the dawn while paltry hopes and slim fears compel the coming storms to hasten from the ocean. Meanwhile, up above, the blue and the green of the ancient sky convey a broad and serene truth difficult to comprehend but nonetheless present in the escaping feeling of aimless anxiety beginning to fetch a glimpse of the raw buoyancy of tires on lined and mangled asphalt, repaired and re-repaired dozens of times in the sun. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The morning clouds came and went, came and went, and the breezes pink made mauve-gold dimples where green grass bent. The night was empty for having spent its last gold coin on a deep drink of morning clouds where they went across the ripples that lent the surface of the river's ink these mauve-gold dimples where green grass bent like the glassy eyes of an old gent staring out and starting to think about clouds that came and went, came and went into the tent of the day that was on the brink of mauve-gold dimples where green grass bent. Wherever my father went, I can only recall and blink, it was where the morning clouds were sent, where mauve-gold dimples and green grass bent. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

****** Click above to listen to a replay from the jopomojo poetry podcast, 2023 ^Three poems from Tulips for Elsie, pp. 110-112 (Korrektiv Press, 2021). * Note the correction in the last line of Sonnet #8Potter Poems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

savannah of sky / sweetening the view / lightening the weight of day // my coffee cup half empty / my morning half full / of the joy to come This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the blood of the sun / is on the water / where the water and the air // for a moment become one / in the bleeding heat / and simmering light This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The point of this exercise is to walk the stepping stones of gold light from the sunrise, to let gold infuse one's bones with faith to walk on shards of light without submerging back to night. The sun has crept up behind a wall of cloud to convey an eye peeking through a blind, a line of sight to belay the boat that might today set sail to take me where it cannot fail. So I imagine taking my first step like Saint Peter or like a toddler making a move to walk and teeter toward the thrill of waking words and a murmuration of birds. So the sunrise charts my path and the oracle of days frees me from the risk of wrath, assures me of breezy ways singing my sails towards the sea to a new world awaiting me. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

A calm pink and blue sky sets the scene for a return to normalcy and light. There is a change in the air, a feeling of the mending of the structure of reality. The birds in the garden partake of the poetry of the replenishment of the water from the hose coming from miles and miles away to sparkle in the rising sun. Jesus said deliver us from evil and lead us not into temptation. And when deliverance comes let us relax and enjoy it — no need to yammer on and on. Yet we may also speak and our words may form poems to describe the rising and to celebrate the sky. Let us go then into the day. And let us go then, you and I. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

how the sun rises / how it never stops / can be easily explained // people can be taught and trained / science and theory / from old history This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

A poem from my book, House of Words (Korrektiv Press, 2010, p. 11) and a recently unearthed earlier version published in The Whitman College Pioneer (Feb 12, 1987, p. 9). Written and performed by Jonathan Potter (jopomojo poetry podcast, 2023). Listen to the audio above and let me know in the comments which version you prefer.Potter Poems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The opening of the gate may be early, may be late, but enter, don't hesitate, this is your time, so seize it, grab the sunrise and squeeze it onto your tongue to please it like an orange ripe with juice, like an ace against a deuce, like a river to a moose, like the time I kissed your lips, like the time you spread your hips, like the gate through which time slips into eternity’s smile, into paradise a while while karma deletes your file from the server of the damned, from the chaos of the slammed, from the ram and ewe just lambed giving birth to a new day, making you light when you weigh the odds of the color gray turning velvety and gilt, gold intentionally spilt across the landscape that we built. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The focus of the present is to share this moment of mystery with someone, your traveling companion and guide to good manners, perhaps, on this strange journey into the vastness of tomorrow and the day after the day after that, the days lining up like birds on a wire preparing to fly away one by one as you trace their flight paths across the horizons of their inevitable migrations to lands unknown, to places barely born and yet eternally old, which is why you must not let trivialities come between you and the prize lurking in the here and now, the gold nugget of love already in your pocket. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The swallows, martins, gulls, and chirping wrens pay little mind to me along the shore where Kaniatarowanenneh bends around the elbow of the island, more like morning, scented with the after-rain, than later when the sun begins to bake the air, and future memories complain that time is always lurking and will take the sunrise and the morning on its way to afternoon and evening getting dark, the long night to have the final say, to pluck with death the song out of the lark, and yet again we trust another morning will come when Alouette sings its warning. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

A saffron blackberry sunrise above the ungainly sweet potato shaped lump of land set down to divide the flow of Kaniatarowanenneh on its way to the great sea. There's something different in the air this morning, a turning point, not the finish line but the thought of a new world and this one changing, changing, no turning back, everything the same but new. The river, the birds, the beaver — all seem tuned in to this change, this change to what remains the same. The river is eddying, the birds are gliding and swinging in higher arcs than before. I see the beaver lift its head above the surface to look at me and then to dive again to the secret places there along the shore, using its tail to tell me a secret tale. Potter Poems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

1. Keeping Still, Mountain My heart like a mountain in the rain Like yesterday's rainfall I listened to the news As I drove to the sunrise Awakened by a rush of blood My dreams reminded me of love 2. Influence (Wooing) Like a calm lake in the mountains My mind reflects the rising sun Recalls the breakthrough of light As the memory of rain Awakens feelings of joy A lingering dream's sensation This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Gongoozling along Little Venice's canals, I came upon a heron loitering for its breakfast in the grey overcast dawn. The heron eyed me, then took flight. There was the suggestion of a sunrise behind the broken blinds of the old sky. I carried an umbrella. My beloved lay sleeping back at her father's cousin's house. What are we doing here? I asked myself as the need for coffee began to press. I returned and turned the key in one lock and the other, opened the door and found my way to the quiet kitchen, the household not yet risen, discovered light switches and a coffee maker with pods. I fumbled with the device until I bent it to my will. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

How could the wind refuse to blow when the earth and sky make such a perfect playground for it, and when contemplation takes the form of a gentle wandering breeze in the soft early morning? On such a day the songs of birds carry a wisdom without words and the music of the river hums in undulating whispers, the raccoon hails the beaver, the rabbit eyes the squirrel, and among them I go walking, learning from them without talking. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Treading on the tail of a tiger while sleepwalking can be the best way. Much easier than when awake. Alternatively, to paddleboard across a lake in the summer, my daughter, can be quite fun. If Sensei Watts is right and it's all a game of hide and seek, then we need not fear treading on our own tail. As a matter of fact, we can have a good laugh about it in a few trillion years today. If the clouds above the lake grimace and shake like the snoring sheets of dawn when the alarm clock of the phone implores the sleeper to awaken, if you are that sleeper (or if I am) then let us rise, you and I, even though there is no you and no I, no lake and no sky, but we can play along because playing along, especially in the morning, is good form, and good form is half the battle. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The struggle of the sun to rise will be replaced by daylight and the calm realization that the second in command can easily assume the helm of the day as it progresses towards a strange and terrible night of irreducible stars to guide and deliver every lost ship to its port where once again the sun will rise as it inevitably does. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The glory of the sun decreases after the slow explosion of color as of a Van Gogh or a Gauguin — being poor was how they let the coral from tubes of paint squeeze out to the end and fill the whole world, posthumously, with unanticipated splendor. Just like that, I empty my pockets and remove my shoes to pass through the gates of the dawn, empty and strangely alive at the tail end of the dying world. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the sadness of leafless limbs their sad hallelujahs to the sun seeming to fail to rise hiding beneath birdsong leaves the sun paving a path of gold and answering hallelujah This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The stirring in my heart I felt this morning stirred me to wakefullness in the dim light of the pre-sunrise dawn. I rolled over on my back and touched my neck to check my pulse, wondering about my family history felt in the mirror and the back of my mind, pointing me to an image of the dark dawn, a liaison with death’s dim grim grin looking back at my dim reflection blinding my dilated pupils’ pre-dawn shuffling walk I felt was needed in order to pee before going back to bed to touch the lovely back of my lover in the dim calm of our marriage bed, to sleep a little more in my great good fortune deeply felt, then to rise with her at dawn. “How very early comes the dawn this time of year.” And I say back, “How early and late I’ve felt our love refuse to grow dim.” And she says, “I will come with you, my lovely poet.” “I’d love you to,” I say. We get in the car to go to the river where the dawn is overlaid with all our past and future going back to our dreams and memories’ dim and vivid images first felt when we felt the river flow to the dim majesty of the dawn — our going and our coming back. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Salamander sun sliding through the clouds, a revolution accompanied by birdsong, dandelions and rabbits suddenly (dis)appearing, blessed chaos in the backyard. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The scene is set to create a universe from the mustard seed of a dream I can't recall. I opened my hand at dawn and there it was, almost invisible. And then I blessed it and let it fly. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

How to Move to Canada 1. The family of all things, as Mary Oliver put it, is where we struggle to find our place. When I think of my father's love and the legacy of love he left, I see myself standing there. Then I think of my mother and her grief in the wake of him disappearing across the distant horizon where the river empties itself into the ocean and the sun sets for us all. But then I think of this dawn, this sunrise on the river where I stand among the wild geese and ducks who seem to acknowledge my place in a new way this morning, moving around me with ancient love and welcoming me even as they send me on my way to where every movement is a standing still in the family of things and where I will claim my proper place to give love and receive it. 2. Sunrise separates the night from the day. And on this day I'm driving away from the gray with lightning and hail at my back and the music of the mysterious mountains before me, the imprint of the constantly changing dance of light and dark and meaning and chaos playing out like a piano scroll made of dark pavement and painted lines and rumble strips keeping me in line. I repent of my too harsh judgments of friends and loved ones in this election year even as I turn my back on them to drive away. I wish them well as I hold my lover's hand and smile at the golden glowing horizon calmly racing towards me at the speed of music, changing, changing, changing, changed. 3. Sunrise off the interstate syncopates our Montana sojourn waking up in Billings to the music of regrets merging into a melody of love’s momentous consolation in the family of things, in shared memories and plans, in the motel breakfast buffet, in the foibles of friendship and the knowing what not to say when politics and friendship collide. At the Wyoming state line meadowlarks begin to sing in earnest with cricket chorus, and the smell of wild flowers — despite horrific history — triggers a beatific vision of yin and yang united like the rolling hills and sky carrying us past Sheridan through a landscape rife with ghosts to get the car washed in Gillette on the way to the Devils Tower. 4. From Devils Tower in Wyoming to the Black Hills of South Dakota, arriving on the set of the old west Deadwood and tracing the footsteps of Wild Bill and Seth Bullock to await the dawn over the presidential district, we walk the gulch and gawk at fellow gawkers hearkening back to the 1800s and keenly felt in the inner truth of the present madness afflicting these United States and all of us teetering on the edges of our own souls' devils' towers' pinacles where flowers grow unseen and from where we rappel back down assisted by the frayed ropes of a broken-down democracy, hoping that in the sunrise of love we might find our way past Mount Rushmore and on to Birchbark Books in Minneapolis where stories, poems, and truth reside. 5. Four Future Afterthoughts Foretold from the Past 1. Nourishment Out in front of Birchbark Books, my beloved and I having driven across from Seattle — a literary pilgrimage — we press pause on The Night Watchman and pay homage to Louise. 2. Treading Carefully At nearby Kenwood Park, we walk past a playground noisy with girls and tread carefully around dangers left by bad dog owners, everyone observing Juneteenth calmly despite blue jays screeching. 3. Careful Affection We find a picnic table — a solid symbol of the solidity of our marriage — and sit a while, I writing, she reading yet another book while stretching her good and bad leg. 4. Attention to Detail Slowly and steadily we go back to the car to resume our journey toward Montreal where we will unpack my things with care in a couple of days and turn the page of a new book. 6. The Sleepy Hollow Motel, between the thumb and forefinger of westernmost Gitche Gumee, is where my love and I lie in the innocence of love and the guilt of humankind. We’ve dined on peanut butter and bread and the last few ounces of the Monkey’s Shoulder we brought with us from Washington State (a gift from a Spokane friend, now transformed to emptiness). And now, after making love, we sink into the innocence of sleep, with thoughts of Bob Dylan’s childhood home in the hills of old Duluth, regretting not visiting the typewriters of the Hunker Bunker and Mr and Mrs Peterson on the other side of the bridge. We wish them well and travel on in innocence and guilt to seek the next horizon. 7. The border guards raised their eyebrows at the amount of stuff we were hauling into Canada from the land of the insane to the south. So we had to get out and make an accounting. A friendly interrogation ensued, since the mutual love between our two lands persists despite ongoing questions about obliviousness and drunken driving of the ship of state. My love and I answered their questions satisfactorily and continued on our way persisting in our own love mutually arrived at years ago and now reaching a turning point of stability between north and south, the compass of mutual attraction ceasing to spin as madly now as in the past, but still pointing us to one another. 8. How to Move to Canada is the title of a book snagged from a Free Little Library and packed up with the thousand things jammed into my ailing Highlander and squeezed through the needle's eye of Sault Ste. Marie, mon amour in the passenger seat and navigating along the northern shore of Lake Huron through Sturgeon Falls, with a stop for lunch and to see her lovely tante et oncle. I am neither a rich man nor a camel, but I do have a heart full of love and many bright ideas floating in my head, not to mention an advanced degree or two and a fairly clean criminal record and bill of health to help make my case, gently and humbly, to the office of immigration as the sun rises at its northernmost point on the Montreal horizon. 9. "Decrease combined with sincerity" is what this morning's I Ching reading suggests I meditate upon. Canada the mountain above, America the lake below, Myself the evaporation of liquid water into drifting clouds heavy with the bounty of the rain to be transubstantiated into the gifts of grapes and wine and, flowing with the river, love pouring into the simplicity of the vast and mysterious sea. Not hesitating to help when help is needed — but with sensitive awareness — is an element of this release of assertion. But to do so with one's dignity preserved — a stranger in a strange land — is also paramount when one's home is no longer separate but joined at the culmination of a long journey together that ends precisely at a new beginning. 10. Four Past Foretellings Retrieved from the Future 1. Innocence (The Unexpected) At each turning of the road we catch glimpses of these future memories of the passing past filled with wonder and surprise at the one shining moment that encompasses us all. 2. Influence (Wooing) The persistence of influence — your wooing of me, my wooing of you — is our journey to the vanishing point of love, the inner summer solstice of our being with each other. 3. Decrease A vision at the border arises from the one side meeting with the other like a match striking and decreasing itself in a sparkling flare, dying only to increase. 4. The Receptive Nature in contrast to spirit, darkness in contrast to the light, gentleness in contrast to force — not in opposition but joined in the eternal song and dance that has brought us to this moment. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

"Decrease combined with sincerity" is what this morning's I Ching reading suggests I meditate upon. Canada the mountain above, America the lake below, Myself the evaporation of liquid water into drifting clouds heavy with the bounty of the rain to be transubstantiated into the gifts of grapes and wine and, flowing with the river, love pouring into the simplicity of the vast and mysterious sea. Not hesitating to help when help is needed — but with sensitive awareness — is an element of this release of assertion. But to do so with one's dignity preserved — a stranger in a strange land — is also paramount when one's home is no longer separate but joined at the culmination of a long journey together that ends precisely at a new beginning. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

How to Move to Canada is the title of a book snagged from a Free Little Library and packed up with the thousand things jammed into my ailing Highlander and squeezed through the needle's eye of Sault Ste. Marie, mon amour in the passanger seat and navigating along the northern shore of Lake Huron through Sturgeon Falls, with a stop for lunch and to see her lovely tante et oncle. I am neither a rich man nor a camel, but I do have a heart full of love and many bright ideas floating in my head, not to mention an advanced degree or two and a fairly clean criminal record and bill of health to help make my case, gently and humbly, to the office of immigration as the sun rises at its northernmost point on the Montreal horizon. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The border guards raised their eyebrows at the amount of stuff we were hauling into Canada from the land of the insane to the south. So we had to get out and make an accounting. A friendly interrogation ensued, since the mutual love between our two lands persists despite ongoing questions about obliviousness and drunken driving of the ship of state. My love and I answered their questions satisfactorily and continued on our way persisting in our own love mutually arrived at years ago and now reaching a turning point of stability between north and south, the compass of our combined attraction ceasing to spin as madly now as in the past, but still pointing us to each other. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The Sleepy Hollow Motel, between the thumb and forefinger of westernmost Gitche Gumee, is where my love and I lie in the innocence of love and the guilt of humankind. We’ve dined on peanut butter and bread and the last few ounces of the Monkey’s Shoulder we brought with us from Washington State (a gift from a Spokane friend, now transformed to emptiness). And now, after making love, we sink into the innocence of sleep, with thoughts of Bob Dylan’s childhood home in the hills of old Duluth, regretting not visiting the typewriters of the Hunker Bunker and Mr and Mrs Peterson on the other side of the bridge. We wish them well and travel on in innocence and guilt to seek the next horizon. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

From Devils Tower in Wyoming to the Black Hills of South Dakota, arriving on the set of the old west Deadwood and tracing the footsteps of Wild Bill and Seth Bullock to await the dawn over the presidential district, we walk the gulch and gawk at fellow gawkers hearkening back to the 1800s and keenly felt in the inner truth of the present madness afflicting these United States and all of us teetering on the edges of our own souls' devil's towers' pinacles where flowers grow unseen and from where we repel back down assisted by the frayed ropes of a broken-down democracy, hoping that in the sunrise of love we might find our way past Mount Rushmore and on to Birchbark Books in Minneapolis where stories, poems, and truth reside. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Sunrise off the interstate syncopates our Montana sojourn waking up in Billings to the music of regrets merging into a melody of love’s momentous consolation in the family of things, in shared memories and plans, in the motel breakfast buffet, in the foibles of friendship and the knowing what not to say when politics and friendship collide. At the Wyoming state line meadowlarks begin to sing in earnest with cricket chorus, and the smell of wild flowers — despite horrific history — triggers a beatific vision of yin and yang united like the rolling hills and sky carrying us past Sheridan through a landscape rife with ghosts to get the car washed in Gillette on the way to the Devils Tower. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Sunrise separates the night from the day. And on this day I'm driving away from the gray with lightning and hail at my back and the music of the mysterious mountains before me, the imprint of the constantly changing dance of light and dark and meaning and chaos playing out like a piano scroll made of dark pavement and painted lines and rumble strips keeping me in line. I repent of my too harsh judgments of friends and loved ones in this election year even as I turn my back on them to drive away. I wish them well as I hold my lover's hand and smile at the golden glowing horizon calmly racing towards me at the speed of music, changing, changing, changing, changed. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The family of all things, as Mary Oliver put it, is where we struggle to find our place. When I think of my father's love and the legacy of love he left, I see myself standing there. Then I think of my mother and her grief in the wake of him disappearing across the distant horizon where the river empties itself into the ocean and the sun sets for us all. But then I think of this dawn, this sunrise on the river where I stand among the wild geese and ducks who seem to acknowledge my place in a new way this morning, moving around me with ancient love and welcoming me even as they send me on my way to where every movement is a standing still in the family of things and where I will claim my proper place to give love and receive it. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Early morning traffic under the brutal comfort of the unangry orange and gold sunrise, vermillion and scarlet, pale pink and cobalt mauve moving into a deep and infinite blue. Something heavy being pulled along the unforgiving solidity of the highway, the driver listening to right wing radio conspiracy theories and taking gulps of coffee. A sedan with headlights befitting five a.m. gliding in the opposite direction heading to the hospital to see her dying father, listening to the music of misery. In this captured moment time stands still and the sunrise sings a song to woo the distracted from their distractions and back into the flowing river of love and trust reflecting every color. Potter Poems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Inwardly free of sorrow, the sun radiates its fullness to the sheltering morning as the verdicts of wisdom shine forth and the dull-wittedness of the deceptive is revealed in the sudden early light of summer speeding into spring, and the location of dawn on the eastern horizon inches to its maximum point in the land of the midnight sun. I wake from a solid sleep with the aching bones of old age hinting at my youthful mind that I, too, am approaching that point where the fullness of life turns back to glide towards the grave and the pigeons of morning celebrate the alternating sun and cloud and wind and rain as one journey ends and another begins, as poetry speaks to marrow, free of sorrow. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The abysmal morning carries me on a current of dismay at abyss upon abyss, and yet the river of friendship continues to flow toward the Sea — I must believe it does and that these many changing lines must point to a place downstream past these eddies of confusion and propaganda to where the river turns again to flow toward the places I love, west past Umatilla, The Dalles, Hood River, Multnomah Falls, the criss-cross bridges of Portland, Astoria, the Sea — to join with the sunset and ride the roller-coaster of dangerous water over the bucking bar of November and into the calm but terrifying Sea. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The bent branches of dawn sway to the music of the sun, finding the right moment in the moment of sunrise to face the day's trials and awaken with joy. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

As promised, I circled back around to fill in my gaps in Writer Pilgrim by So Elite’s month-of-May song-title poetry challenge — and got my entries in just before the clock struck midnight on May 31, 2024. So I’m reposting the letters I’d missed along the way: A, B, Q, R, S, T, U, and V. I followed the rules and limited myself strictly to song titles (with some poetic license applied to capitalization and punctuation) and I made them all into fourteen-liners, which you might therefore call pseudo-sonnets. I also created, as best I could with what’s available, Spotify playlists that correspond to the poems. Allison Russell Persephone the runner, the returner — Eve was black, rag child — stay right here, you’re not alone, nightflyer: all of the women, the hunters, demons, everything I wanted all without within by your side. Björk Come to me violently happy like someone in love. I miss you Isobel, it’s oh so quiet. You’ve been flirting again — possibly maybe big time sensuality. It’s not up to you — an echo, a stain, quicksand. All is full of love, all neon like. The Quizlings I am the robotman, come join me in the outerspace of my dreams you beautiful people. How hot does it have to get until the haters start to love? Who do you think you are sunrise rider? I’ve been down this road crazy shaking angry. It doesn’t do me no good, Mrs. Flash Gordon. Won’t you be my neighbor all ye who labor? The Ramones Listen to my heart: Sheena is a punk rocker; I don’t wanna walk around with you, I don’t wanna go down to the basement, I wanna be your boyfriend. I remember you — Do you wanna dance? Do you remember rock n roll radio? Rock ’n’ Roll High School? Blitzkrieg bop? Gimme gimme shock treatment, I wanna be sedated — teenage lobotomy — I just want to have something to do. Bruce Springsteen It’s hard to be a saint in the city racing in the street, tougher than the rest out in the street. I wish I were blind, blinded by the light, lost in the flood, born to run. Darkness on the edge of town, my hometown, I’m goin’ down, downbound train meeting across the river — the river. Tori Amos Cornflake girl, abnormally attracted to sin, sleeps with butterflies. You can bring your dog Mr. Bad Man, putting the damage on. In the springtime of his voodoo I can’t see New York, maybe California. Don’t make me come to Vegas, Mrs. Jesus, bouncing off clouds. Welcome to England, another girl’s paradise. U2 I threw a brick through a window staring at the sun where the streets have no name — two hearts beat as one. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for when I look at the world with or without you stuck in a moment you can’t get out of. I will follow in a little while until the end of the world running to stand still. I fall down when love comes to town. Van Morrison Sweet thing, moondance, these dreams of you when that evening sun goes down come running into the mystic hymns to the silence, the eternal Kansas City brand new day, crazy love, and it stoned me hungry for your love — I wanna roo you, Natalia. Potter Poems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The lake, the youngest daughter, receives the light of the sun who is, at sunrise, the father. My pondering of the I Ching this morning tells me to tread lightly down that golden path. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The sunrise woos me to wake up just as my beloved woos me to continue dreaming into day while she rides the train of love to endure her day of work, wooing me silently every breathing moment of the workday she suffers through, every twinge of her torn meniscus continuing to hobble her best intentions to run after me in triumph. What else can I tell you about my bedazzled beloved one? She inhibits her nimblest features which nonetheless radiate from her as from a goddess seated above Athens. Her tongue, usually hidden, can speak like rose petals in spring and acrobatically navigate two mother tongues, the sunrise and the sunset, while wooing me continuously. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The sky at first glance today was like a cave painting from a paleolithic morning and I felt my sleep had been cut short by its music clinging to my heartbeat till I woke and went outside to fathom with my seven senses the dimensions of the day. I couldn't get away from the intensity of that sky even though for a moment I tried and thought about returning to my bed to fall back to the sleep of my distant tribal ancestors clinging to their campfires as the flames cling to the wood and as I cling to you. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The generous sky spreads out a table of righteousness before me in the presence of my enemies and friends. The latter thankfully are far more numerous, I wager, and I hope to make friends of the former by the day's end. But for now, I stand in the brisk air of early morning in Spokane and accept that I am a mere whisp of the breeze stirring the leaves of mid-spring on its way to summer and autumn and on to winter, gliding over the Selkirks, up into Canada where my cup can't help but run over. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Whiskeytown Excuse me while I break my own heart tonight dancing with the women at the bar, waiting to derail, too drunk to dream. Take your guns to town, Captain Smith, the rain won’t help you when it’s over, pawn shop ain’t no place for a wedding ring. Somebody remembers the rose, black arrow, bleeding heart. 16 days, yesterday’s news, reasons to lie, don’t wanna know why.X Your phone’s off the hook but you’re not, Los Angeles. I’m coming over, riding with Mary. In this house that I call home, we’re desperate, we’re having much more fun under the big black sun. I see red, painting the town blue. What’s wrong with me? I’ll stand up for you, drawn in the dark Alphabetland.Neil Young Cinnamon girl, cowgirl in the sand, the old laughing lady, the loner, the emporer of Wyoming — I’ve been waiting for you. After the gold rush a man needs a maid — old man out on the weekend down by the river, southern man lookin’ for a love. Everybody knows this is nowhere. Powderfinger tell me why only love can break your heart. Are you ready for the country heart of gold? The needle and the damage done? My my, hey hey (out of the blue) harvest moon, I believe in you.[E] Zolita 20 questions for the both of us: Somebody I f*cked once? Small town scandal? All girls go to heaven? Fight like a girl, hurt me harder, drug me now, drag me to hell, evil angel. Shut up and cry, come home with me, ruin my life — I f*cking love you. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe